124 Mr Heape, Notes on the Proportion of the Sexes in Dogs. 
necessary brevity of this preliminary communication prevents me 
from analysing more fully his painstaking paper. 
The assumption of male characteristics in old females and of 
female characteristics in old males is common knowledge and is 
evident not only in structural modifications but in modified mental 
traits. It would seem as if the recessive sex is here asserting 
itself, either on account of atrophy or hypertrophy of the domi- 
nant sex, either from exhaustion resulting from a long and active 
sexual life in paired individuals, or from a want of sexual exercise 
in unpaired individuals. 
There are many examples of the existence of structural 
rudiments of the recessive sex, such as the clitoris of the female, 
the oviduct and mammae in the male ; while the occurrence of 
both structural and functional characteristics of the recessive sex 
in many unisexual animals from birth, is also well known, e.g. in 
the Pipe fish (Gudger “ The breeding habits and the segmentation 
of the egg of the Pipe fish, Siphostoma Florida,” Proc. U.S. Nat. 
Hist. Mus., vol. 29, 1905), and there seems to me ample evidence 
for the conclusion, that there is no such thing as a pure male or 
female. 
From these premises it must be concluded, in order to fulfil 
the required conditions, that a male ovum is fertilised by a female 
spermatozoan and, vice versa, a female ovum by a male spermato- 
zoan in all animals other than those produced parthenogenetically. 
But if it is true that the adult animal is never purely male or 
female it may be argued that the sexual products are similarly 
constituted. In that case an ovum or a spermatozoan contains 
dominant male or female characteristics as the case may be, and 
recessive characteristics of the opposite sex. (Conf. Castle, loc. cit.) 
In such case the possibility of infinite gradations of sexual 
differentiation in an individual would be vastly increased and, 
from the point of view of heredity, such complex conditions carry 
with them factors of the greatest importance. 
For instance, the sexual selection which is undoubtedly, though 
unconsciously, exercised by civilised peoples, renders it probable 
that the recurrence in a nation, at long intervals of time (as 
suggested by Weininger “ Sex and Character,” 1906), of an 
increased or reduced proportion of so called effeminate men or 
of masculine women, or of the ebb and flow of a number of 
national characteristics intimately associated with the predomin- 
ance of characteristics peculiar to one or the other sex (such as 
the desire for war, national hysteria, social sexual problems, &c.), 
may thus be accounted for. Weininger ably maintains, and it 
seems clear, that national characteristics of this nature are 
definitely correlated with the sum of dominant sexuality which 
exists at any one time. 
